[629] The Slave's Dream

Guest poem sent in by Rajarshi Bandyopadhyay <rajb@>

Beside the ungathered rice he lay,
  His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
  Was buried in the sand.
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
  He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams
  The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
  Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans
  Descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
  Among her children stand;
They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,
  They held him by the hand!--
A tear burst from the sleeper's lids
  And fell into the sand.

And then at furious speed he rode
  Along the Niger's bank;
His bridle-reins were golden chains,
  And, with a martial clank,
At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel
  Smiting his stallion's flank.

Before him, like a blood-red flag,
  The bright flamingoes flew;
>From morn till night he followed their flight,
  O'er plains where the tamarind grew,
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,
  And the ocean rose to view.

At night he heard the lion roar,
  And the hyena scream,
And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds
  Beside some hidden stream;
And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums,
  Through the triumph of his dream.

The forests, with their myriad tongues,
  Shouted of liberty;
And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,
  With a voice so wild and free,
That he started in his sleep and smiled
  At their tempestuous glee.

He did not feel the driver's whip,
  Nor the burning heat of day;
For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep,
  And his lifeless body lay
A worn-out fetter, that the soul
  Had broken and thrown away!

 	-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For some reason, 'Reverie of Mahomed...Tank' reminded me of another dream
poem, 'The Slave's Dream' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I guess it is the
same idea of the poet trying to 'live' another person's feelings, especially
a person from a different culture/race. [An interesting twist to the theme,
and not one I'd thought of -m.]

I think 'The Slave's dream' is a great poem because of the way it draws the
reader emotionally into itself...and the way it seems to control the
emotions. Initially we feel pity, sadness, at the present condition of the
slave, and then the nostalgic feeling of pride and glory when he thinks of
his royal past. And finally, it ends on a note of triumph and hope.

-Raj

Links:

Hope's 'Reverie of Mahomed' was part of the current 'Dream' theme: poem #627

For a biography of Longfellow, see poem #172

From: "Haydn and Jeanne" <setter1953@>

Dear ?,
Saw the film Amistad last night and my wife told me about a very moving
poem she used to read over end over again as a little girl. Then we
found it on your web site. Thanks. The last verse is the most moving,
the contrast between his former life and reality is stark.
Haydn.

From: "anne.milne" <anne.milne@>

studied a long time ago at primary school-this poem made a deep
impression. Great to re-read and re-think.

From: "Rob Laking" <roblaking@>

I've just come back from hospital where my 87-year-old mother is,
temporarily I think: she had a fall but it doesn't seem that the injury is
serious. Her greatest injury is simply old age. She has been drifting in and
out of sleep she tells me and fragments of poetry and blank verse she
learned as a girl at school or a young woman come into her head unbidden.
Amongst others, she remembered the opening stanza of this Longfellow poem. I
wrote it down, telling her I would look it up (God bless Google). I agree
with another comment: it's of its time in sentimentality but an honest
attempt to see through another's eyes and in the end not a sad poem -
triumphal almost. I liked it because she remembered it, and it gave her
pleasure.

Rob

From: "John Black" <john.black1@>

Rob Laking's comment brought a tear to my eye when I read it this
lunchtime. I visited my Mum last week in the residential home where she
has lived for the past few years. She is 82 and sadly well past her best
before date. She was recalling her favourite poem and claimed I had a
book containing it in the loft and asked that I found it. OK, so I've
found it now but just in case I thought I would do a search on the web.



The final line of Rob's comment just seemed so appropriate....



John Black

From: Mr Denis Hayward <haywire1010@>

Remembered snippets of this poem from Primary 
School and was thrilled to find it again - made a big impression on a small child

--Boundary_(ID_rVNMUs/Stu89Hfno1Sgv8g)
Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1106" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Remembered snippets of this poem from Primary 
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>School and was thrilled to find it again - made a 
big impression on a small child</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></BODY></HTML>

--Boundary_(ID_rVNMUs/Stu89Hfno1Sgv8g)--

From: jmohamed@  Fri Oct 28 00:04:34 2005

I was talking to my wife couple of hours ago about a Poem I read in my
Primary School that left an indelible mark in my mind....thanks for
helping me relive my child hood memory 'The Slave's dream' by Henry
Wadsworth.